- Wallace, David Foster
-
▪ 2009American novelist, short-story writer, and essayistborn Feb. 21, 1961, Ithaca, N.Y.found dead Sept. 12, 2008, Claremont, Calif.produced dense works that provide a dark, often satiric analysis of American culture. Wallace received a B.A. (1985) from Amherst (Mass.) College. He was completing a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona when his highly regarded debut novel, The Broom of the System (1987), was published. He later taught creative writing at Illinois State University and at Pomona College, Claremont. Wallace received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1997. He became best known for his second novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a massive, multilayered novel that features a sweeping cast of postmodern characters who range from recovering alcoholics and foreign statesmen to residents of a halfway house and high-school tennis stars. Presenting a futuristic vision of a world in which advertising has become omnipresent, Infinite Jest takes place during calendar years that have been named by companies that purchased the rights to promote their products. Wallace's short stories are collected in Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), and Oblivion (2004). His essay collections include A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997) and Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays (2005). Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003) is a survey of the mathematical concept of infinity. Wallace's death was an apparent suicide.▪ 1997Heralded by many critics as a literary virtuoso at the age of 34, David Foster Wallace published (1996) his second novel—the 1,079-page Lannan Prize winner Infinite Jest—to extraordinary fanfare and exceptional sales. In one of the most multilayered plots since Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Wallace introduced an unforgettable cast of postmodern characters that included recovering alcoholics, foreign statesmen, residents of a halfway house, and high-school tennis stars. Presenting a futuristic vision of a world in which advertising had become omnipresent, Infinite Jest takes place during calendar years that have been named by companies that purchased the rights to promote their products, most notably the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland and the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. With his witty writing style and uniquely poetic grace, Wallace won over many readers who delighted in his accurate satirizations of current popular culture.Born on Feb. 21, 1962, in Ithaca, N.Y., Wallace, the son of a philosophy professor and an English teacher, received a B.A. from Amherst (Mass.) College. He was completing a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona when his highly regarded debut novel, The Broom of the System (1987), was published. His first collection of short stories, Girl with Curious Hair (1989), was said to display a full range of his talents as he "renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, the familiar strange." In 1990 he published the nonfiction work Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present. A professor at Illinois State University, Wallace, who was hired to teach creative writing, said he preferred teaching freshman literature because he was able to show students who did not like to read that "reading literary stuff is sometimes hard work, but it's sometimes worth it and . . . can give you things that you can't get otherwise."Often compared to such postmodernist writers as William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and John Barth, Wallace was the neophyte in a tradition that had produced some of the U.S.'s most bizarre and outspoken literary voices. Though the author admitted that he was unable to do much reading during the four years he spent researching and writing the originally 1,700-page Infinite Jest, he proclaimed himself to be "severely overeducated" and inspired by such writers as John Donne, Cormac McCarthy, Cynthia Ozick, and Tobias Wolff. Wallace was one writer who was true to his philosophy, proving time and again that readers could be challenged and enlightened—but most of all entertained. (SARA BRANT)
* * *
▪ American authorborn Feb. 21, 1962, Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.found dead Sept. 12, 2008, Claremont, Calif.American novelist, short-story writer, and essayist whose dense works provide a dark, often satirical analysis of American culture.Wallace was the son of a philosophy professor and an English teacher. He received a B.A. from Amherst College in 1985. He was completing a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona when his highly regarded debut novel, The Broom of the System (1987), was published. He later taught creative writing at Illinois State University and at Pomona College. He received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship grant in 1997.Wallace became best known for his second novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a massive, multilayered novel that he wrote over the course of four years. In it appear a sweeping cast of postmodern characters that range from recovering alcoholics and foreign statesmen to residents of a halfway house and high-school tennis stars. Presenting a futuristic vision of a world in which advertising has become omnipresent, Infinite Jest takes place during calendar years that have been named by companies that purchased the rights to promote their products. Critics, who found Wallace's dense writing style variously exhilarating and maddening, compared Infinite Jest with the novels of Thomas Pynchon (Pynchon, Thomas) and Don DeLillo (DeLillo, Don).Wallace's short stories are collected in Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), and Oblivion (2004). His essay collections include A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997) and Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays (2005). Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003) is a survey of the mathematical concept of infinity. He also wrote, with Mark Costello, Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present (1990; 2nd ed. 1997). Wallace's death was an apparent suicide.Sara Brant Ed.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
